Archive for June, 2011

Discussions of a Treasury default all share one common feature—no one is certain as to what a default would actually entail. A recent article in The Economist highlights a study by Terry Zivney (Ball State University) and Richard Marcus (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) that looked at the last instance of U.S. default in 1979. The…Read More »

One of the common refrains we hear from people who want to focus on “fixing” the budget deficit by increasing federal tax revenues is that U.S. corporations pay less in income taxes than what businesses in other nations pay. But in focusing on just U.S. corporate income taxes, these people are ignoring a huge…Read More »

In “CBO Releases Daunting Long-Term Outlook,” Tim Fernholz at the National Journal reports that: Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term…Read More »

The Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson reports on the progress of budget cutting talks currently ongoing in Washington, D.C,. in his opinion column: For the first time, Senate Republicans describe to me the outlines of a possible deal: a package of immediate and specific budget cuts; budget caps reaching out five years to reassure conservatives…Read More »

Bernanke urges for an increase in the debt ceiling, demonstrating the wisdom of James Buchanan and Richard Wagner. In Democracy in Deficit, Chapter 8, the authors set out to model Keynesian-oriented fiscal policy with the “the plausible hypothesis that monetary authorities are, like elected politicians, subjected to both direct and indirect political pressures, and…Read More »

This video, “Brother, Can You Spare a Trillion? Government Gone Wild!”, has now had over 2.7 million views on YouTube. It summarizes the gigantic threat that U.S. government debt poses for America, with annual interest payments alone this year totaling more that all federal spending for the combined costs of the departments of Commerce,…Read More »

The news from America’s hospitals as recorded by the Associated Press sounds dire: A growing shortage of medications for a host of illnesses — from cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest — has hospitals scrambling for substitutes to avoid patient harm, and sometimes even delaying treatment. “It’s just a matter of time now…Read More »

Last year, Americans believed Federal government debt to be just as dangerous as terrorism. According to the a June 2010 Gallup poll, 4 in 10 Americans ranked both Terrorism and Federal Debt as an “extremely serious” threat to the future well-being of the United States. One year later, Osama bin Laden is dead. The…Read More »

Based on a new study from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Chris Gonsalves at NewsMax reports in “What Debt Crisis? Fed Workers Making More Than Governors” that: At a time when many American workers are struggling to make ends meet and government debt is threatening to undermine economic recovery, thousands of federal employees are…Read More »

Terence Jeffrey reports at CNSNews.com that “China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills” over a 20-month period. Is this a major reflection of the increasingly precarious status of the U.S. dollar and U.S. government finances worldwide? China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing…Read More »